Ray Harryhausen, 29 June 1920 -- 7 May 2013

I wanted to do something nice for today's Ray Harryhausen Appreciation Day, but I couldn't think of anything. My creative juices just don't seem to be flowing at the moment. Maybe it's the heat.

That said, Ray Harryhausen is a man to whom we all, especially gamers, owe a great debt of gratitude. He will be missed.

Another Appreciation Day!

Over at Mesmerized By Sirens, Catacomb librarian is sponsoring an Obscure Fantasy Games Appreciation Day on May 30, dedicated to fantasy games from 1975-1989 that aren't D&D. He plans to make it an annual thing, too, so that's pretty awesome. I will be participating, of course. Hopefully, I'll come up with something different than just another entry into my Obscure Games series!

Maybe I'll write up some of my suggested alterations for Fantasy Wargaming. Or maybe I'll write up a location for Lords of Creation (I dunno, is fantasy plus science fantasy plus crossing genres "fantasy"? I'll have to ask). Perhaps I'll do something else. We'll see!

[Obscure Games]Swords & Wizardry

Well, here it is, the first Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day. Perhaps this will be the only one, or perhaps there will be more. Certainly, a number of the people involved are making posts all week! I'm just doing the one, though, because I am a lazy blogger.

Of all the retroclones, Swords & Wizardry was the most interesting to me from the start. Where Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC presented the rules very closely to the source, S&W chose to make a couple of significant changes that streamlined play (and also moved the rule sets further from the possibility of the current D&D copyright holder choosing to engage in legal shenanigans to try and suppress the game). It turned out that the legal worries were not very important but, as often happens when constraints are placed on creativity, it resulted in some really interesting design choices that further illuminate what we mean when we talk about "D&D", and even roleplaying in general. For that alone this is an important set of rules. However, it is also an elegant and fluid set of rules that works well at the table.

Swords & Wizardry comes in three basic "flavors": Whitebox, Core, and Complete. Each of these represents a version of the original D&D rules set, with varying amounts of influence from the four supplementary booklets that were published for use with it. S&W:Whitebox sticks almost entirely to the original three booklets that came in a white box. S&W:Core adds material from the first supplement, Greyhawk. S&W:Complete adds more material from the supplements, and furthermore continues on to some of the early options presented in The Strategic Review and the first few issues of The Dragon magazine (before it lost its "The"). In addition to these basic "flavors", other people have put together versions that emulate the Holmes "Blue Book" edition of Basic D&D, that reskin the whole thing for Japanese-style fantasy adventures (Ruins & Ronin), and so on. In addition, there are a few supplements that alter the basics to better fit specific settings (my own favorite is Savage Swords of Athanor). The Whitebox and Core versions are published as POD products on Lulu.com by Mythmere Games, while the Complete version is published in print by Frog God Games. Over there on my blog's sidebar, there is a link to the online SRD for S&W:Complete, though. Also, Mythmere provides free versions in PDF and even .rtf format for those who want to use the text to write their own version.

S&W:Whitebox strips the game almost to its barest essentials. There are only three character classes: Cleric, Fighter, and Magic-User. The stats have very minimal effect on characters, generally giving only a ±1 to rolls affected by them, though experience bonuses are the real benefit. Each character class starts very similarly in hit points, with Clerics and Magic-Users getting a single d6 hit die at first level, while Fighters get a d6+1. These quickly change as the classes go up in level, with the Magic-User rising only to 3d6 at fifth level, while the Cleric has 4d6 and the Fighter 5d6 at the same level. Every character has a saving throw determined by level, with the Cleric and Magic-User starting at 15 and the Fighter at 14, each improving by 1 point per increased level. This roll is used for any instance where a saving throw is called for, though certain specific situations may have modifiers (dwarves, for instance, get a +4 to saving throws versus magic). There is an option to use a saving throw grid derived from the original game, for those who are unable to function without save categories. Characters are given experience charts up to tenth level, with anything higher presumed to be according to however the Referee wants to handle it. Magic-Users do have an expanded chart indicating their spell use at higher levels, since sixth level Magic-User spells aren't available until a character reaches twelfth level.

Damage of all weapons, as in the original edition (and the Holmes Blue Book), is always a single d6, though a modifier of ±1 is given for heavy or light weapons. Armor Class, in a particularly interesting move, is given in both the traditional descending form and also in the innovative ascending form of the WotC editions of D&D. So, an Armor Class might be listed as 5[14], with the number in brackets being the ascending form. The license to use the rules does require that this format is always used for Armor Class, so derivative games need to do so. This ensures that the players and Referee will be able to choose which they prefer at the table.

Other than lists of equipment, spells, and monsters, and a system for placing treasure, that is it. A completely simple set of rules that avoids the sometimes odd emergent behavior and occasional outright missteps of later editions of D&D.

The somewhat longer S&W:Core adds a number of things from later supplements for the original D&D, such as an optional Thief class, variable weapon damage by weapon type, variable hit dice per class, and expanded spell listings up to seventh level for Clerics and ninth level for Magic-Users. There are a few spells that I'd use the Core versions over the Whitebox ones (Contact Other Plane, I'm looking at you), in part because they are actually closer to the original writeups in the three original booklets, and in no small part because they work better than the Whitebox versions.

In addition, Core explores hirelings in more detail, adds a rudimentary mass combat system, more monsters, and more treasures (especially increasing the number of magic items).

S&W:Complete finishes this by adding all of the fundamental classes that most of us got used to in AD&D, such as Rangers, Paladins, Druids, Monks, and Assassins.

For myself, I am especially attracted to the stripped-down, house-rule-ready version that is Swords & Wizardry: Whitebox. I am particularly attracted to stripping out (arguable) mistakes like the Thief class, as well as questionable "improvements" like variable hit dice and variable weapon damage. A house rule that gives secondary skills to characters whose "class" is simply a description of whether or not they use magic spells, such as the skills system in Savage Swords of Athanor, seems like a good way to avoid the need for a large number of character classes while also separating character class from the idea of a character's profession. Merging that with, for instance, the secondary skills system that is in Adventures Dark and Deep might be a fruitful way to go, actually.

Another useful item from Mythmere Games is the Swords & Wizardry Monster Book, which includes (according to the back cover) 265 monsters from the original books (0e-2e), 3 monsters from the third edition, 9 monsters from Monsters of Myth, and 186 monsters never before seen in print. Some of the entries are dull (it's difficult to make a wolf interesting, but it is something that needs to be statted out), some are interesting (the Wandering Hole!), and some are spectacular (such as, for me, the Tsalakians and Kzaddich, the Artificers of Yothri and their Amphorons, and the various Toad monsters such as the Yurmp and the Todawan Masters, among others).

Most of the books from Mythmere Games are available for free in electronic version, and none of the books is very expensive in print. The Frog God Games version is available online (again, the link is over there to the right), and is not too expensive in print either.

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day Sales

Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day, which is going on as you read this (my entry will go live in a few hours), includes a few sales which will last only one day. Here is information about two of them:

From Frog God Games:

Frog God Games has discounted their entire line of Swords & Wizardry products for 1 day only in celebration of Swords & Wizardry appreciation day (April 17th 2013). The discount is good for 25% off S&W Products but you must use coupon* code SWApprDay on April 17th 2013 at check out. 

*The coupon excludes items less than $1, S&W Cards, Pre-Orders, and Subscriptions.

From the S&W online SRD:

Here is the coupon code for the Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day sale [17 April 2013]!

SWAD252013

It applies to everything listed here: http://shop.d20pfsrd.com/collections/swords-wizardry-appreciation-day

Happy S&W Appreciation Day!

Adventures Dark and Deep

I wrote the basics of this review as a comment over at Mr. Bloch's excellent blog, but I figured that I'd bring it here and expand on it. You can go to his blog for a link to purchase the book.

The idea of Adventures Dark and Deep is a speculative one. If Gary Gygax had not been forced out of TSR and had been allowed to develop AD&D in the ways that he wanted, what would the game's second edition have looked like? To build this, Mr. Bloch researched every word that Gary ever wrote on the subject, and compared those to work that he did in later games such as Dangerous Journeys: Mythus or Lejendary Adventures. Of course it is not exactly what Gary would have written, but it does look a lot like what he was moving toward.

I support this idea enough to have funded it through Kickstarter, at a level that would get me the hardcover of the Players Manual (there will be two more volumes, one for Gamemasters and one with monster descriptions; this is obviously the basic format of every edition of AD&D, as well as the WotC editions of D&D). My hardcover showed up on Saturday, and I am very pleased with the physical quality. It's not perfect (it uses, as usual for a POD product, glued rather than stitched signatures, for example), but it is at least as good as most products. The ink is clear and doesn't smear, the paper is smooth and has a good feel, and so on.

The text, as well, is high-quality (even if it does retain some things from Unearthed Arcana that I would have liked to see developed further - notably, the Chromatic Orb spell, which has always just been removed from my games), and I am very, very pleased with the work that Mr. Bloch did on this. I am considering using this ruleset in place of 1E in the future. I am especially happy that he chose to include the weapon vs. armor type table, even if he did relegate it to an appendix as an optional rule. On the other hand, he also rationalized it by separating the armor types from armor classes.

For those considering it, if the idea strikes you as a good one, then the product is well worth the $30 price tag for the hardcover.

(I also received my copy of Traveller5 on Saturday, but that is over 600 pages, so it will be a little while before I can say anything about it. Finally, sorry about the radio silence for the last couple of weeks. I hope that will be over now.)

Tell Ya What I'm Gonna Do

There's a little appreciation day coming up, focused on Swords & Wizardry. I've decided to participate in it.

Now, I've been quiet for the last week for a really good reason: my local cable company is making the first two seasons of Game of Thrones available for free for the week, so I've been (re-)watching like heck, and not doing a whole lot else.

I haven't finished any, but I've given some thought and a bit of writing to the next couple of Obscure Games entries.

I hope that you are doing well.

Goth of the Week

Demi Doom

This is the last time that Goth of the Week will be regularly published here. I may occasionally do this in the future, but I won't hunt for photos and schedule posts on a regular basis anymore.

Turning The Gatekeeper Test Back On

I'm getting tired of dealing with spam comments. Captchas back on. I apologize to everyone.

Do spammers actually think that anyone is going to respond? Don't answer that, I know the rationale. It's just annoyed me too much today.

Goth of the Week

Luka, from Croatia. Deathrock styles are awesome, and show the connection between goth and punk more clearly.

Oh, and yesterday (the 14th) was my birthday. I'm older.

Metal!

Brass six-sider prototypes! The actual
dice will be laser-etched, they say.

A couple of people have mentioned it, and I want to add my voice because it looks pretty nifty, and I like nifty things. There's this Kickstarter which is set up to manufacture a bunch of metal dice, precision engineered. I mean, who wouldn't want steel dice? Or frickin' magnesium dice! I mean, that is pretty damned spiffy. The people who play Victorian adventure games that don't want brass dice? I don't want to meet anyone that lame. You can get them by the set of seven (d4, d6, d8, d10, d10 tens digit, d12, d20), by sets of d6, or by sets of d10. The aluminum dice are the least expensive, at $70 for a set of seven, but they go down to $40 for a set of 6d6 in aluminum (or even less for a single d20 in any of a variety of metals, if you get in pretty soon).

Think about having a set of titanium dice. Those would last for-frickin'-ever. Of course, they'd also run a chunk of change ($160), but they're precision machined and you'd never need to buy them again.

So, they're like Zocchi dice, but without the flash and they're made of metal so they'll never chip or crack (and no bubbles inside to throw them off). Stainless steel dice, copper dice, bronze, brass, magnesium, aluminum, titanium. Man, I wish I were rich, so I could get those titanium dice. Those would be sweet. I'll probably get the brass six-siders, for use with Space 1889.

\m/ METAL! \m/

Character Occupations

People throughout the land have to make money somehow.

One of the things that I think about is what the player might want to do in the game, and how to accommodate those desires. Most games provide a system for fighting, so that's easily covered, but the reasons for fighting aren't usually discussed. Of course, the main reason is usually money, either directly or indirectly. However, the way that the character intends to make that money is highly variable. We can call these different ways of making a living "occupations", and there are only a finite number of them. They are also not the same thing as "character classes" or "archetypes" or other ways of designing a character's abilities. Anyone with any set of abilities can engage in any particular occupation, though perhaps some ability sets are more suited to particular occupations than others. Occupations, as I see them, are more like the basic assumptions of a game, and the more that are available in the game, the wider the opportunities the players will have. Here are the ones I can think of offhand that have adventuring possibilities, and what game systems need to be in place to make them viable.

Baron - this is a general term for those characters who are in charge of administrating a domain. However, see Homesteader. Needs a system of domain administration and probably a mass combat system.

Bounty Hunter - characters that take money to find and bring back other characters, whether dead or alive depends on the contract. Needs a system of investigation in order to find the target characters.

Cunning Person/Alchemist - characters that make magic items, such as potions or charms. Needs a system of magic item creation. See also Priest/Magician.

Explorer/Ruin Robber - the prototypical adventuring occupation. Needs a way to explore ruins or wildernesses. Traditionally, this is by hidden map.

Homesteader - characters who travel to uninhabited (or at least unclaimed by any civilized people) area and plant a homestead or colony. This usually leads to becoming a Baron. In addition to the requirements for a Baron, also needs a system of building up an area with buildings and other infrastructure and for discovering what forces might try to destroy, raid, or conquer the homestead. Those elements might also be useful for a Baron, but are not necessarily essential.

Mercenary/Guard - characters who go where they are told and perform violence when needed. Can't think of any special requirements.

Merchant/Pirate/Bandit - in this occupation, characters buy low and sell high. If they're lucky. Needs a system for generating and pricing trade goods. ACKS does this really well. Pirates and Bandits are just like Merchants, but they are willing to incorporate violence into their process of buying low (and sometimes of selling high).

Priest/Magician - providing spiritual or magical services to other characters. The exact nature of these services depends on the particular game system and setting. Frequently this includes varieties of healing or attending to matters of a character's spiritual state (aka "piety"), or otherwise assisting an individual or community. This occupation also includes character magicians who cast spells for money, as well as both mendicant and temple/professional priests.

Spy/Assassin/Thief/Ambassador - a variety of related occupations that involve deception and deceit in various ways. Requires a system to allow various types of deception, such as disguise, lying, stealthy movement, and so on. Oh, and poisons.

What other player occupations might there be?

Kill Your Television

And your movies and books, while you're at it. Roleplaying games might take inspiration and worldbuilding cues from movies, TV shows, and books, but it should not attempt to slavishly simulate them. This is because roleplaying is an entirely different medium, even though it looks slightly similar.

This came up in a search for "boring
theory".

(A quick warning: this is all going to be boring theory. Feel free to skip this one.)

In a traditional fiction, the narrative is linear - this is true even when the story is told in "cut-up" order, or flashbacks, or whatever. The few exceptions (Naked Lunch) simply prove the rule. A traditional fiction is told from beginning to end, even though that beginning and that end and the parts in between might not be chronologically sequential. That is, you read the book, watch the movie/TV show, examine the comic from the starting point, following along through the medium as it leads you, then finish when it no longer continues.

There is a sole exception to this, and that is the genre of "choosable path fiction", such as the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. But, you see, now we have entered the realm of those things that are traditionally called "roleplaying games". These are fictions which interact with the audience in meaningful ways, in which the audience makes a choice that is then reflected in the continuation of the narrative. Some Computer Role Playing Games (CRPGs) such as Fable and Darklands fit this criteria, though many seem to have no meaningful choices, only scenes where the player fights, then is moved on by the linear narrative scenes into the next fight.

So we have the situation where a character in a linear narrative has to have certain events occur (and others not occur) in order for the ending scene to occur as necessary to the satisfactory resolution of the narrative. This means that the character will exhibit strange distortions of statistical likelihood. He will not be hit by any bullets that could kill him, she won't fall off the cliff as she climbs up the side, he will always find the critical clue that finalizes the villain's guilt, she will be able to dig herself out of the grave in which she's been buried alive. These happen in traditional fiction because they have to happen in order for the final resolution to occur.

In a roleplaying game, this sort of "lust for result" is not inherent to the form. A roleplaying game doesn't have a predetermined character who will achieve a predetermined outcome (rescuing the princess, killing Bill, whatever). Instead, a roleplaying game is more like a puzzle, in which there is a situation that exists (and it may be a situation that changes in response to player actions or a timetable), and it is up to the players to "solve" that puzzle in such a manner as fits their own conception of success.

Some games, though, have given players a resource (points, a special character talent, or some other metagame method) which allows them to modify the character's world in ways that simulate the distortions of statistical likelihood inherent in a linear fiction. When I was younger, I grudgingly accepted this as a way to "simulate" (as I thought) such linear fictions. I called this "cinematic play" at the time. I have since come to dislike the idea, and prefer to consider "cinematic" as a general descriptor of particular physical assumptions that vary somewhat from those in the real world.

A roleplaying game should avoid lust for result. That is, it should not start with a conception of how it will end. The ending (such as it is) of a roleplaying game should develop from the imperfectly-understood choices of the players in relation to the scenario and the rulings and play of the Referee. And even that is a bad way to formulate the situation, because unlike a linear fiction, a roleplaying game does not (have to) have a defined ending at all. A long campaign, if it ends at all without the deaths of the people playing it, is more likely to just peter out. If it bears any resemblance to a linear fiction in this way, it would be to an ongoing series, such as comic books or some types of adventure novel series (The Destroyer, Perry Rhodan, whatever).

In avoiding lust for result, Referees are freed of the temptation to control the players' characters. They are freed of the need to alter dice rolls. They are freed of their quantum ogres. This allows everyone, even the Referee, to be surprised by events in the game, to experience the fiction entirely new, because the fiction didn't come into existence until the communication of the players (including the Referee) and the universe's weighted random number generator as revealed in the dice and the game's rules.

(OK, yeah, I realize that all of this is old hat, but I'm starting to see that people new-come to the ideas in "old-school" style gaming are not really understanding what's going on, so I thought it would be worthwhile to make a new formulation of the concepts.)

Goth of the Week

I do not know who the model is, but I found this here.

Edit to add: The model is Corinna Cassani. Thank you to Mild Colonial Boy, Esq. for finding it!

Gameable Fiction

I've been spending most of my reading time these days with George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" series. I was introduced to the setting through the excellent HBO adaptation, but quickly decided to read the books as I was sure that there was deeper content, and more of it. I was not disappointed.

Of course, we all know that the series has been adapted as a roleplaying game (though to be sure, I don't know very much about the game and how well it adapts the material; it seems to me that HârnMaster would go a long way toward developing the feel of the setting, with some work adapting the terrible and exotic magics of Martin's fantasy). There are a few other literary settings that have been adapted by specific roleplaying games: Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Vance's Dying Earth, Moorcock's Melnibone and some other Eternal Champion material, Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, Niven's Known Space, Fleming's James Bond (though perhaps that was more an adaptation of the movies), Constantine's Wraeththu, Herbert's Dune (twice, though only once officially), Butcher's Dresden Files, Zelazny's Amber, along with a very few others. This doesn't include those settings that were mere supplements for other games, such as Thieves' World, Wild Cards, or Adams's Horseclans. There are even a few, such as Howard's Conan, that have been adapted more than once. In addition to those, there are some movie and television settings that have seen adaptations, like Star Wars (three times so far!), Star Trek (more than three times, depending on how you count it!), Firefly, Babylon 5, and so on.

However, there are some settings of fiction that have not been adapted to roleplaying games, and I am not sure why that is. Eddings's Belgariad, Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, Butcher's Codex Alera, Burroughs's Barsoom (well, it sort of has, but not really), Lee's Flat Earth or Birthgrave, Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, Brooks's Shannara, and so on. Some of them, I can understand if the rights have issues or are otherwise difficult to secure, but the popularity of such as Malazan or Shannara would seem to have caused someone to go through the effort.

What settings do you most want to see turned into freestanding roleplaying games? Which would be better off as a supplement for an existing game like D&D/Pathfinder, GURPS, BRP, or whatever?

Goth of the Week

Maria Amanda